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My older brother had been taken to Ireland by an aunt to stay with our grandparents until after I was born so I felt like an only child until my sister was born, then I felt like an eldest child. My father just disappeared, (as fathers did — into the services) and small children couldn’t understand what happened to them. Mine had been sent to Yorkshire to teach women how to service and drive ambulances and jeeps. He was considered too old to fight but he was a motor mechanic and women were needed to take the place of men who were now in the armed forces.

He came home on leave when he could, sometimes getting a lift from Yorkshire to Finchley at short notice, so we didn’t always know he was coming. No mobile phones then! I remember him arriving home unexpectedly very early in the war. He was dressed in uniform with a cap, which hid his face. I didn’t recognise him coming up the stairs and reaching out to pick me up and I screamed blue murder! It must have been hard for a man who’d travelled two hundred miles to see his wife and baby to get such a welcome. Confusing for me too, who wanted him to come home. Another time he arrived in the middle of the night. He let himself into the house where we lived, in the black-out of course. He was trying to move quietly so that he wouldn’t wake up the whole house but my mother had had a spell of moving furniture around and he didn’t know where he was. He fell over everything and succeeded in waking everyone up after all. Not a very good welcome home that time either.

I don’t remember the air raids early in the war but I know my mother took my sister and me to an air raid shelter near the Torrington pub. I think we must have gone there early and settled down for the night. That must have continued for some time because apparently I used to talk to a tramp at night and each week he gave me 6d, (2 1/2p) for chatting to him. I don’t remember this but it doesn’t seem unlikely. The air raids I do remember came around 1944. By then my mother had two more children. That made four of us under six, not counting my brother in Ireland. We lived upstairs in a large house, which we shared with other people. Downstairs there lived a very elderly lady. She was disabled and lived alone and consequently was allocated a Morrison shelter for her bedroom. It had an upper deck and was rather like two bunk beds pushed together with a roof on top, or a double on top of another double bed with a roof. She was required to share it with us.

We went to bed upstairs in our own bedroom every night, then when the siren sounded to warn of air raids, our mother got us up and, new baby in one arm and my one year old sister in the other, pushed my three year old sister and me down the stairs in front of her to the old lady’s bedroom. We all got into the upper part of the shelter and settled down together for the rest of the night. The old lady, of course, was already settled down for the night. I was aware of the grownups being afraid so I was afraid too but I loved us all cuddling up together. I think it must have been dreadful for the adults who understood what was happening and I realise now that people had no way of knowing where the bombs were falling which they could hear. Next day, of course, the only way you’d know if your relatives or friends were safe would be if you were able to go and find out! We had lots of relatives around Barnet, North Finchley and Finchley Central and my mum must have been thinking about them but it would have been very difficult to check every one out each morning if it meant filling a pram up with babies and young children and setting off on foot. Mostly, I guess, people waited for news of where the bombs had fallen or waited for bad news to come if there was any.

I remember some food shortages and things like dried egg and milk. Not very nice but if you’re hungry you don’t complain too much.

My grandmother visited us from Ireland after one of my sisters was born and brought eggs and butter and a chicken with her. There was great excitement and talking and admiring the baby and while the grownups were busy, I was exploring the bags of food. I picked up an egg and was looking at it and sniffing it and I dropped it on the floor. I knew I would be in big trouble because food like this was so scarce so I tried to push it, yolk, white and shell under the mat on the floor, hoping they wouldn’t count the eggs in the bag and realise one was missing. I did get caught trying to hide it and, needless to say all the grownups joined in telling me off good and proper! When fresh eggs were available, I think the ration we were allowed was one a week, but after my father was invalided out of the army in 1944, he was entitled to an egg a day. Needless to say, we children received the benefit of that piece of good fortune. I also remember my mother pushing the pram with two in it and two holding on to the sides as she walked from Finchley to Barnet because a neighbour had called in to tell her that a shop in Barnet had bananas. When fresh fruit like that was available, people told each other and women often walked long distances in the hope of getting some for their families even though they knew perfectly well that the shop might have sold out before they reached it.

Another thing I remember was grownups laughing. There must have been so much worry and sadness that I didn’t know anything about, but I do remember the women, my mother and my aunts and neighbours laughing a lot and for decades afterwards when they got together and started talking about the past, they’d remember the same funny things that happened and start laughing again. One of my aunts was 94 when she died and up to the very last years of her life she enjoyed telling these stories and laughing at them again.

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